


Butterflies & Machine Guns

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-28
Updated: 2005-11-25
Packaged: 2019-01-19 23:19:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12420315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Remus Lupin's constant struggle for happiness is contrasted darkly with Darlene Denni's exploration of sexuality and God. Their perceptions provide salvation, always amongst the butterflies. Angsty.





	1. Prologue Pt. I

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

  
**Butterflies & Machine Guns**   
_By Solarism_

PROLOGUE PT. I   
Posted August 28th, 2005

* * *

_  
Why is everyone preoccupied with butterflies?_

When Remus drew, he juxtaposed butterflies and machine guns, sometimes massacring the butterflies with silver bullets, other times making the butterflies carry the weight of the guns with their fragile little wings. 

_He was not preoccupied; he was enamored._

A light fluttering, a dash of magic thrown on the parchment like an inkblot, and everything was animated and colored and alive--vibrant, dying, falling. Remus spent hours behind the dark curtains of his four-poster, conspiratorially drawing portraits of the Madness. 

_His quill was his savior._

When he felt dark and brooding, he would throw away his quills and promise himself redemption for his sins. A handful of Hail Mary's later and there was nothing left to be ashamed of. A rosary of words hung round his neck. The noose was tightening every instant; a storm cloud forming eerily at his feet, at his head, in his mind. Remus was not a happy man. Spending every day in his diseased body was a part of the Madness. 

_Inflicted by the butterflies, he drew._

His pulse pounded in tandem, a cycle, a tide, of washing in and washing out: the glowing moon's pull. He writhed and writhed against it, scratching at his face and eyes in repulsion, but there was nothing to tear away. He was bitterness personified. 

_A waxy exterior; the wax of the moon._

Occasionally his ink bottles would overturn, though undisturbed, a reset hourglass begging for his attention. In his moments of misery he would turn over in bed, punch his down pillows half-heartedly, and ignore the dripping ink. His nightstand was always stained a murky black. 

_Stains greasy suds could not remove._

The butterflies and the machine guns were hidden away in a crate during the morning hours, a closing time for the melancholy. Remus knew who he was and knew who, at the end of the day, he wanted to fall asleep with. What he did not know was why he was tortured; why, month in and month out, the tide swept, the grains of his humility forming a spiraling castle of sand and dust... 

_Depraved with a lack of normality, everything fires in unison._

A twisted, painful grimace at midnight echoed throughout his dreams. Memento mori, Remus always thought. Remember you will die. 

_Salvation among the butterflies; salvation at last._


	2. Prologue Pt. II

  
**Butterflies & Machine Guns**  
 _By Solarism_  
PROLOGUE PT. II  
Posted April 8th, 2005

* * *

Darlene Denni wanted a religion.

She craved a God to save her mortal soul, a dark deity to encompass her, to embrace her on the cold nights when a lover could not be found. God to Darlene was a figurehead of a perpetual orgasm. Once you started believing, you just couldn’t get out of the ecstasy.

She wasn’t particularly interested in goodness. She was, however, interested in sex.

Darlene didn’t have a lot of it–sex, that is–because even if one is willing, it can be hard to find someone who is also willing, and who is furthermore willing to do it with you. She knew a lot about sex, and she read a lot about sex, and she dreamed a lot about sex, and she wrote a lot about sex, and she talked a lot about sex, but she’d only had sex a handful of times during her stay at Hogwarts.

She wanted to have sex with God.

It was a fantasy fit for an erotic porno; she could just imagine the cheap budgeting that would come of it. Perhaps they’d get a romantic hero to play God, with a penis several inches too long to be believable, and she bet that he’d be a blonde. She could see God as a blonde, at least in a porno, with a 2 dollar halo above his head, suspended there with a cheap wire. All a part of the budget, baby.

When Darlene was younger, before sex entered her life, she saw a porno and really believed that men were regularly that large.

She had been naÃ¯ve.

Darlene Denni had a secret passion for these sort of things, these provocative situations and these religious ambitions, and she kept them to herself, locked away inside her twisted little chest, scratching and gnawing at her insides.

She wanted to have sex with James Potter.

She wanted to have sex with Sirius Black, too.

Mostly Sirius, though, because Sirius was more reckless. When he would walk by–no, saunter by, in that devilish way of his–Darlene would watch his hips. They would sway back and forth, back and forth, almost femininely. She wanted to touch his lips, to press them into her body, to ask Sirius if he believed in God and Jesus and if he read the Bible and if he was a good boy, and if deep down, he wanted to go to Heaven.

Darlene liked the idea of Heaven.

When alone, she kissed herself by licking her lips and tucking them into her mouth a little bit, savoring the tastes she found there, and she imagined that she was kissing Sirius, or maybe James, or maybe any boy, or maybe a girl, or maybe a teacher, or maybe God…

She wasn’t a whore; she was a teenage girl.

_Darlene, Darlene, Darlene_ , the world thought, _how vague_.


	3. Definition

  
**Butterflies & Machine Guns**  
 _By Solarism_  
CHAPTER ONE: DEFINITION  
Posted November 24th, 2005

* * *Remus Lupin was in the world for good. He was seeking something interesting, something less explosive than organs to latch onto. He wanted to be carried to a temple and deposited in front of God. He passed through the halls simply, quietly, carrying his books this way and that, only occasionally piping in some input when his friends looked at him strangely. He was a quiet one those days, that Remus–Peter Pettigrew said it was because he “hadn’t had a bird in ages.”�

 

Remus would pass by Darlene, but he never much noticed her. She was the kind of girl that boys like Remus Lupin (who seek goodness and abnormality) _never_ notice. Her eye make up was too dark, her chest too large; she looked at him too hungrily, as though she needed him and wanted to devour him, body and soul.

 

Darlene hated him for that. She carried a heavy satchel, far too heavy for a girl as unattractive as she. She walked quickly when she caught sight of Remus Lupin and his friends. _Lupin the perfect Prefect_ , she’d tell herself bitterly without really knowing why. She’d never met Remus Lupin, Darlene Denni–but she felt an odd connection to him anyway. It was something about his ink-stained hands. If he’d only let her, she’d fuck him real well; she’d press his fingertips to her running mascara and stain them even blacker. She’d get under his fingernails if he’d kiss her hard enough.

 

But then, that was Remus; he would never do a thing like that, would never submit to being ravished. Darlene would slump back to her Transfiguration class, thinking of the ways she’d kiss Remus’ friends, that James Potter and that Sirius Black and maybe even Peter Pettigrew if he was really as kind-hearted as he looked. While she transfigured mice, she thought of Peter’s blue eyes and the way they’d widen gazing at her naked body, uninhibited.

 

For his part, Remus was unaware. Remus, Remus, Remus of the golden hair and the tired eyes, who always had ink stains on his fingers and his schoolbooks–the summative epitome of a young, bright Hogwarts scholar. That boy was going somewhere, everyone could tell. Why did he always look so tired? What clouded those brown eyes at night? Instead of falling into a teenaged lover’s arms, he sat up drawing, thinking of the butterflies.

 

To Remus, it was all a part of the slaughter.


End file.
